Re-Evaluating Resettlement: Best Practice and Challenges to the Reintegration of Offenders

• In Event: Sources of Variation in Experiences of Reentry

Abstract

In 2013 as part of the Transforming rehabilitation agenda in England and Wales, a new direction for the prison estate was introduced. The 2014 Offender rehabilitation Act cemented this change by introducing re-settlement focussed prisons as part of the prison estate, which will house prisoners serving sentences of twelve months or less or within three months of their release. The paper focuses on the issue of resettlement and in particular will present the findings from a nine month ethnographic research study conducted in a local prison in the North West of England. The purpose/intention of resettlement prisons is to reduce re-offending, by assisting prisoners to overcome barriers to desistance and thereby enabling them to participate proactively in society. Set within academic literature, this paper will identify best practice and key challenges of resettlement for the prison estate, focussing particularly on the perceptions of staff and prisoners as part of the research project. It will argue that the challenge is not only to listen to the voices of both but to address the similarities in what the voices say.

Author

• Ester Louisa Ragonese, Liverpool John Moores University